Lisa Randall Quotes
A mathematical theorem can be true whether or not it is realized in the world.
There are many systems of mathematics which are totally contrary to the world as we know and observe it; others, reflect the world as it is known. The latter we use for science. The former exist only in the mathematics world. We have mathematics today of computers that do not exist, universes that can only be imagined and some that are not even imaginable. Sometimes we realize that a mathematical system we thought had no reflection of reality, was really useful in explaining a new physical phenomenon. What is theoretical today, might need to be applied tomorrow.
Lisa Randall, Physicist, Interview, PBS The Charlie Rose Show, September 16, 2011
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This quotation illustrates one of the major reasons politicians and laymen have difficulty making educational policy on mathematics education. It is the laws that govern mathematics and their structure that is most critical, not the ability to calculate and measure although the latter are important and useful by products.
Feynman generally emphasized the importance of a scientist understanding the mathematics of his/her subject, especially where nature's complexities abounded. At the time few appreciated the importance in the biological sciences of mathematics which we know today is so essential.
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston. In mathematics the numbers can count people, autos, sins, molecules, or paintings. The mathematician does not know or care. And the mathematics is the same regardless. And the fundamentals themselves are unknown. For example, what is a number? It’s not the symbol we write; that is a numeral. Some say that it is an abstract idea that represents a quantity like 5. But what is 5? That itself is an abstraction. So few mathematicians and no layman know what they are talking about when they do mathematics. Lord Russell, with his colleague Whitehead, built up a system where they could define a number as a set with certain properties. But they take 3 large volumes full of equations in a small type font to just get to 3rd grade arithmetic and knowing what they are talking about. In politics, we also often do not know what we are talking about, but that is for a much simpler set of reasons.
For many scientists, this is the goal of each area of inquiry. For others, the science is crude and really not understood unless the mathematical model exists and can be verified experimentally. For Thompson, this was the difference between understanding and not.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
Lisa Randall is an American theoretical physicist working in particle physics and cosmology. She is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science on the physics faculty of Harvard University. Her research includes elementary particles, fundamental forces and dimensions of space. She studies the Standard Model, supersymmetry, possible solutions to the hierarchy problem concerning the relative weakness of gravity, cosmology of dimensions, baryogenesis, cosmological inflation, and dark matter. She contributed to the Randall–Sundrum model, first published in 1999 with Raman Sundrum.
